BPN458: Optical Antenna-Based nanoLED

Project ID

BPN458

Website

Start Date

Thu 2008-Jul-17 16:21:33

Last Updated

Mon 2017-Aug-14 13:16:44

Abstract

Spontaneous emission has been considered slower and weaker than stimulated emission. As
a result, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have only been used in applications with bandwidth < 1
GHz. Spontaneous emission is inefficient because the radiating dipole is much smaller than the
wavelength and such short dipoles are poor radiators. By attaching an optical antenna to the
radiating dipole at the nanoscale, the emission rate can be significantly increased enabling
high modulation bandwidths theoretically >100 GHz. This project focuses on the physical
demonstration of this new type of nanophotonic device. Current fabrication and experimental
results of devices using transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) as an emitter material will
be presented. Fundamental limits of rate enhancement will also be discussed.